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Meteorite-Sikhot-Alin |
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The Sikhote-Alin meteorite fell in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains, Primorye, Russia, near the village of Paseka (approximately 440 km northeast of Vladivostok) on the morning of February 12, 1947.
At around 10:30 am that morning, witnesses reported a fireball brighter than the sun that came out of the north, descending at an angle of about 41 degrees. The bright flash and the deafening sound of the fall were observed for three hundred kilometres around the point of impact. The smoke train, which remained in the sky for several hours, was 32 km long.
Its speed was estimated of about 14 km/s, it began to break apart, and the fragments fell together. At an altitude of about 5.6 km, the largest mass apparently broke up in a violent explosion.
Structure and chemical composition
Sikhote-Alin is a coarse iron octahedrite.
Its composition is as follows:
5.9% nickel,
0.42% cobalt,
0.46% phosphorus,
0.28% sulfur,
smaller amounts of germanium and iridium, and the remainder (approximately 93%) is iron.
The following minerals are present: taenite, plessite, rhabites, troilite, chromite, kamacite, and schreibersite crystals.
Wikipedia source. |
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